I've done a couple rally instructional clinics, and one of the introductory drills they spent a fair bit of time on was just a giant circle of cones set up on dirt. You go around it faster and faster until the car breaks free into a slide, then you learn how to control and maintain that slide however you want. All 4 wheels have lost traction but you can still widen or tighten the radius by using weight shifts. Basically, you start steering using the pedals more than the wheel.
So you're not totally screwed if you lose front wheel traction, but this is stuff we don't teach in basic drivers ed classes.
I think this is a bad thing, fwiw. The standards of driver safety training here are incredibly low.
You can't expect good competency in something like driving from 99% of the public; you're just not going to get it, no matter what it is.
Weirdos.
Got my license in California, instructor skipped the freeway part of the drive test which is mandatory.
Moved to Oregon, new licensees require both a written and a drive test but the DMV skipped them both because I already had an out-of-state (California) license.
Driver licenses are literally stupid easy to get here in the US.
The DMV lady who handled my application skipped them both anyway. ┐(￣ー￣)┌
I got a surprise in CA when I went to the DMV (waited four hours) and then was surprised with a written test. I guess it makes sense.
I asked the instructor why we skipped it, and they said it was because the freeway portion "is too dangerous for the instructors".
I had a good chuckle that day.
And for the record, no, no part of the driving test is dangerous for the examiner any more than for anybody sitting as a passenger. Routes are carefully designed to cover as much & as little as law requires, conditions allow, and much more.
https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/handbook/driving-test-criteria...
The maturity to make responsible choices is hard for younger kids. It’s probably smart to set limits to licenses to discourage bad behavior, but be real, some driver testing guy isn’t helping.
It seems there’s a strong correlation between population density and minimum age one can get a driver’s license.
But in 2000 it had a slightly higher rate than the US.
The road tests did not change, rather Norway changed how its roads are engineered (due to an initiative called Vision Zero!). So I doesn't seem like the more difficult testing actually helps much.
(BTW If you want to lookup numbers be aware most sites quote death/population instead which I find to be a misleading comparison.)
Brazil has a higher rate than the US, but you wouldn’t be able to tell based on the testing there. Mine was:
- Backup parking
- Parallel parking
- Drive around the city with an examiner for a few minutes
Any mistakes in the first two and you’re disqualified. You have to get them right the first time with no corrections (or at least that was the case back in 2007 or so).
For the driving part, you can make two small mistakes. Any critical mistakes immediately disqualify you.
In comparison, in my WA test when I moved here I botched parallel parking 3 times until I got it right. Then I indavertently speeded and also didn’t fully stop at a stop sign (either of which would’ve been a disqualifying mistake in Brazil IIRC). Still got my license.
Nevertheless, I find it MUCH safer to drive in the US (WA in particular, the only place where I’ve ever seen folks consistently driving at or below the speed limit). Brazilian drivers are crazy aggressive and in a lot of places traffic rules are treated as mere suggestions.
I’m now back in Washington (Seattle), and I’m shocked at how often people run stop signs here.
That seems to be the way it goes in the US.
Running stop signs is not a sign of a bad driver, most stop signs in the US are not necessary (and really should be yield signs, except that's not legal to do that for no good reason).
Perhaps that why Norway has such a hard test - they need it!
/s
As an average driver I can floor a modern electric RWD car while turning and despite the strong torque, nothing bad happens.
Sure you can. A tire, any tire on any axle, will start to slide iff you're asking it to do too much work vs. the available traction. That's it. You can always do one (or both) of two things: ask the tire to do less, or increase the traction available to it. You have controls available to change both of these variables (steering and throttle).
Accelerating transfers weight to the rear wheels and lifting off the throttle (deceleration) transfers weight to the front wheels. The steering controls how much work you're asking the front wheels to do.
Once you grok this, it follows that RWD is easier and more controllable at the limit of traction due to separation of controls. The steering controls front traction and the throttle controls rear traction (but I'm simplifying, as the throttle also controls weight transfer thus traction on both axles). In FWD cars you have less fine-grained control since the throttle and steering are both using up traction of the front axle and the rear wheels are merely along for the ride. In a RWD car you can steer with the throttle without changing steering wheel angle.
All of this is car control 101. Which I wish was taught in the US as a prerequisite for getting a drivers license but sadly it is not, so approximately nobody has any experience in how to control a car when traction is less than optimal (rain, snow, oil on the street, etc.)
I urge everyone who drives to take a few car control courses to learn these basics. It can save your life, or the life of others, or maybe just some car repair bills. Totally worth it.
You can reason about the physics when reading about it online but there is no way to train your muscle memory to do the right thing other than by actually spending time practicing these skills in the real world, ideally with a car control instructor next to you.
RWD + traction control is pretty amazing. of course, it doesn't help too much in ice if you're running on summer sports tires, but that's an entirely different problem.
Eventually they could all do a 'controlled slide' around a corner and continue uninterrupted. They've all reported how useful this skill is later (they're all 25+) when they encounter slick conditions - they can feel what to do and respond quickly and intuitively.
With RWD you need more training for these situations, and it's more difficult to save a car.
With front wheels slipping it's also easier with FWD.
In either case, it's good to go for training lessons to learn how to deal with situations like these. Without practice your first instincts will most likely be wrong ;)
The more things you overload (acceleration, brakes and steering) the harder it is for a tire to do the right thing.